A. Introduction to the Family Defense Center’s Model for Family Defense

This article discusses the key ingredients to the success of an unusual family defense organization, the Chicago-based Family Defense Center (the “Center”), which I founded in 2005 after a long career at both a legal services office and a public interest law firm. The Center uses a hybrid public interest law firm/legal services/pro bono network model, along with a sliding scale fee-for-service program, to fulfill its mission of advocating for justice for families in the child welfare system. The Center is devoted to addressing the needs of families, especially families who are targets of child protection investigations. By design, the Center works in a unique and highly specialized niche. But because child protection investigations arise from a wide range of allegations against family members, from domestic violence, to medically complex cases involving fractures and head injuries, to claims of sexual abuse, the practical and substantive expertise of the Center is very broad.

In addition to representing family members in 400 to 600 individual direct service cases each year, the Center has been counsel in over a dozen federal civil rights cases and has won many precedential appellate cases.[2] Center-created precedents have tightened vague definitions of child neglect, set limits on the removal of children based on constitutional grounds, limited presumptions of abuse in medically complex cases, created strong due process rights limiting child abuse and neglect findings against parents and family members, and protected people who work with children from the blacklisting that follows from a wrongful child abuse or neglect finding.[3] Thousands of families have benefited from the Center’s systemic reform work, including the direct exoneration of over 26,000 people from the Illinois Child Abuse Registry through a 2013 Illinois Supreme Court decision and a class action suit that followed it.[4] The Center’s overall individual hearing win rate is approximately 80%.[5]

This spring, the CUNY Law Review will host a Symposium exploring the role of legal practitioners at the intersection of aggressive federal immigration enforcement and emerging people’s movements for racial, economic, and social justice. Responding to a dramatic expansion of the deportation and criminal enforcement infrastructure in the United States in recent decades, multiracial movements from #BlackLivesMatter to #Not1More continue to organize, march, and build toward a more just future.

Organizing and legal action have reached a fever pitch following executive actions by the Trump administration. As thousands of Americans take to the streets to combat these racist and xenophobic policies, this Symposium asks how members of the legal community can be part of an alternative vision for the future in which we can all be free.

By bringing together legal practitioners and organizers working on the front lines of multiple justice movements, this Symposium will explore what works (and what does not work) in past and current legal interventions. We will also ask how legal practitioners can best work in collaboration with intersectional movements for racial, gender, economic, and social justice towards a transformative and expansive vision for immigrant defense.

The Symposium is free and open to the public. Lunch and a concluding reception will be provided. Please RSVP here.

Welcome Back Happy Hour

Bluebook Training

Join us for our semiannual Bluebook Training! We’ll review common errors, oft-forgotten rules, and correct some sample law review citations together. Please bring your Bluebooks, any office supplies you use to mark important pages, and your computers!

Thursday, January 18 | 1:45-2:45pm
Room 1/202

CUNITY Conversation

Join us for a discussion with Cassie Veach, CUNY School of Law 2017, and Shailly Agnihotri, Founder and Executive Director of The Restorative Center (TRC), about their article Reclaiming Restorative Justice: An Alternative Paradigm for Justice that will be published in CUNY Law Review’s 20th volume, issue 2.

Symposium

CUNY Law Review will host a symposium exploring the role of legal practitioners at the intersection of aggressive federal immigration enforcement and emerging people’s movements for racial, economic, and social justice.

More information to follow.

Friday, March 31 | Half Day
CUNY School of Law
CLE Credit Available

A Comprehensive Safety Net: Homeless Prevention in NYC

Join us for a discussion with focus on the nuances of providing services to those at risk of homeless, barriers to accessing services, and larger scale policy reforms geared directly or indirectly at homeless prevention.

On August 16, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark decision on a series of cases relating to businesses and individuals in the state-legal cannabis business. In United States v. McIntosh,[2] the Court heard ten cases challenging the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecution of medical marijuana patients. These cases involved criminal defendants who were charged with violations of federal narcotics laws while ostensibly in compliance with the laws of their respective states.[3] The court determined that federal law prohibits the prosecution of these cases when the defendants are otherwise in compliance with state law. The impact of this decision is discussed infra.

On Friday, November 18 at 9:00 AM we will release the Spring 2017 Staff Member application on our TWEN page. Only 2Ls & 3L visiting/transfer students are eligible to apply at this time – but day and evening students are both encouraged to consider the opportunity. Students already on the Law Review staff need not re-apply. The completed application is due by 5:00 PM on Sunday, November 27, 2016 through the TWEN Assignment dropbox. We are looking forward to your submissions!

In order to retrieve and submit the Staff Member application, you will need to add CUNY Law Review as a course on your TWEN page. We strongly suggest you register for our TWEN page now and download the materials as soon as they become available so we can troubleshoot issues in advance. You may then submit your application at any time before the deadline. Applications will not be reviewed if submitted after 5:00 PM on 11/27/16.

Detailed instructions for completing and submitting the application are included in the application itself, but you may know in advance that you will need to submit (1) a writing sample, (2) a personal statement, and (3) a diagnostic Bluebook test.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail us at CUNYLR@mail.law.cuny.edu. Members of the Law Review will also be available from 12:00-4:00 PM in the Beacon on Monday, November 21 and again by appointment to answer any process questions you may have regarding the application or any substantive questions you may have about publishing a note or comment in the Law Review.

New York State courts, like many other state and federal courts, have seen an increase in cases that pit lawyer versus client; where the lawyer wanted to proceed in one way and the client wanted to go in another direction. The resulting decisions, often inconsistent and irreconcilable, reflect the difficulties in navigating the lawyer-client relationship.

Recently, the New York Court of Appeals again waded directly into the muddy waters of attorney versus client decision-making.[2] On the face of it, the Court was deciding whether counsel needed his client’s consent before telling the prosecutor that his client would not exercise his statutory right to testify in the Grand Jury.[3] However, lurking beneath the surface are the larger and related questions of who, between lawyer and client, has ultimate decision-making power, and what information lawyers must provide clients about their rights.

On November 9, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Lynch v. Morales-Santana.[2] The case directly addresses the constitutionality of gender differences in the acquisition of U.S. citizenship by statute through parentage.[3] But the case is infused with issues about the historical record of discrimination based in gender, non-marital birth, race and imperialism in U.S. law. The outcome of the case will be legally and socially significant because of the standards the Court may apply to gender discrimination and to a remedy for discrimination in the context of citizenship and because of the societal message sent regarding parental responsibility for non-marital children grounded in gender stereotypes.

Join CUNY Law Review for some exciting events this fall in our 20th year of publication!

Bluebook Training

Join us for our semiannual Bluebook Training! We’ll review common errors, oft-forgotten rules, and correct some sample law review citations together. Please bring your Bluebooks, any office supplies you use to mark important pages, and your computers!

Tuesday, Sept. 13 | 7:30-8:30 PM
Room 1/205
Note: a makeup training for evening students and others with immovable conflicts will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 14 from 8:00-9:00 PM in Room 1/204.

Welcome Back Happy Hour

We invite the whole CUNY School of Law community to join us for our annual welcome back happy hour! Help us kick off a new school year and celebrate the beginning of our 20th publication year.

SCOTUS Preview

Save the date! Join CUNY School of Law Professors Janet Calvo, Jeffrey Kirchmeier, Stephen Loffredo, and Ruthann Robson for an evening discussion about the Supreme Court’s docket for the upcoming term. Learn about contested public interest cases and hear predictions for when the 8-member Court might deadlock this term. This event is open to the public!

Thursday, September 29 | 6:00-7:30 PM
Community Room @ CUNY School of Law (3rd Floor)

Lunch with Law Review

Join us to learn more about publishing as a student author! CUNY alums and current students will discuss how to navigate the process of preparing your scholarship for publication. Featuring Allie Robbins (CUNY Law ’09, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs), Tom Power (CUNY Law ’16, CUNYLR Managing Editor ’16), Navid Khazanei (3L, CUNYLR Executive Articles Editor ’17), Shawn Simpson (Writing Fellow).

Perspectives on the Fight for Black Lives

Join us to learn about how and where to get involved in supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement as a legal advocate. Panelists will include Erin Cloud of the Bronx Defenders, Carl Lipscombe of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Thenjiwe McHarris of Blackbird and Vision for Black Lives, Victoria Phillips of the Urban Justice Center, and Anthonine Pierre on behalf of Communities United for Police Reform. Moderated by Chaumtoli Huq of Law@theMargins & CUNY Law’s own Nicole Smith of the Criminal Defenders Clinic.

Street & Graffiti Art, Copyright, and Justice

Please join the CUNY Law Review and the Sorensen Center for International Peace & Justice for an exciting presentation and conversation with Dr. Enrico Bonadio, Visiting Scholar from City Law School in London.

Dr. Bonadio will discuss his research on graffiti, street art, and copyright law. He will address how corporations have used the work of street artists without compensating them for their work.

Countdown to the Symposium

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Mission

The City University of New York Law Review is a student-run publication devoted to producing public interest scholarship, engaging with the public interest bar, and fostering student excellence in writing, legal analysis, and research.